Steel Yourself.

The hits came pretty much nonstop, starting with a comically ridiculous sendoff for Gary Cohn who Trump globalist-shamed in what was most assuredly not a “light-hearted” goodbye:

Trump on tax cuts, last cabinet meeting with Gary Cohn:

"He's going to go out and make another couple hundred million and then he's maybe going to come back… I don't know if I can put him in the same position though. He's not quite as strong on those tariffs as we want." pic.twitter.com/c7Daxv1JKA

And then came the tariff announcement. To be clear, this was bullish because in breaking with pretty much everything he and Navarro have said over the past week, it turns out everyone is potentially exempt from measures that he claimed no one would be exempt from.

… AP leaked the details of the announcement prior to the unveiling. Here are the headlines:

MEXICO, CANADA EXEMPTED INDEFINITELY FROM METAL TARIFFS: AP

TRUMP TARIFFS TO TAKE EFFECT IN 15 DAYS, AP REPORTS

COUNTRIES CAN NEGOTIATE EXCLUSIONS FROM TARIFFS, AP REPORTS

We don’t want to criticize that because that’s just the kind of conciliatory stance the world needs, but it certainly raises the following question: if you’re going to exempt Canada and Mexico “indefinitely” and you’re going to allow everyone else to negotiate for their own exemptions, well then why do this in the first place?

Good point. Although we already know the answer. For Trump/Dennison, literally everyone is an “enemy.”

And just in case the afternoon needed to get a little more interesting in FX land, we got this:

U.K. OFFICIALS ARE SAID TO SEE NO BREXIT DEAL TILL NEXT YEAR

The ECB meeting resulted in a tweak to the forward guidance on QE (the explicit reference to increasing asset purchases was finally pulled), but the updated staff projections underscored the Goldilocks narrative by tipping better growth prospects and still-subdued inflation, with the HICP forecast for 2019 revised slightly lower. The result: a whipsawed euro or, perhaps more poignantly, a masterful job of implementing a hawkish shift in the policy statement and then immediately negating the FX impact with jawboning:

The European Central Bank’s internal staff calculations on the future path of monetary policy assume asset purchases totaling 30 billion euros ($37 billion) in the fourth quarter, according to euro-area officials familiar with the matter.

That’s dovish too, as it quells fears of a cold-turkey approach to APP starting in September.

European stocks rallied into the close and you can attribute that to the upbeat growth outlook if you like, but I’d be inclined to cite the falling euro:

German 10Y yields came back in after spiking when the ECB statement hit:

That appeared to trigger gains in Treasurys.

As a reminder, we got the latest trade data out of China overnight and exports soared.

CHINA FEB. EXPORTS RISE 44.5% Y/Y IN DOLLAR TERMS; EST. 11.0%

Obviously The Lunar New Year holiday makes this impossible to interpret definitively, but don’t expect Trump to care about the nuance as China’s February exports to the U.S. were $31.7 billion while imports from the U.S. came in at $10.8 billion, leaving a surplus of $20.96 billion.

Oh, and fuck this P.O.S, because it’s going to zero:

Finally, for your moment of zen, we go to President Dennison again…

President Trump: “Your father … is looking down, he’s very proud of you right now.”

Prez Dennison, “Oh he’s still alive” and the Count (Draghi) wondering who is friends with our “Dear leader” this was an epic day. Can’t wait until Prez Dennison realizes he is being played by the real “rocket man” and the football games start again about the size of someone’s button. Sanity anyone?